Douglas Hines, an electrical engineer and computer scientist who formerly worked on artificial intelligence at AT&T Bell Laboratories and now is the Frankenstein behind TrueCompanion.com, has created Roxxy, a life-size doll whose sensors respond to stimulation with phrases via an internal loudspeaker (she gives compliments, orgasms, even snores — though she can’t move her mouth, or any other body part, poor thing). They expect to be able to ship product, which is customizable (choose hair color, eye color, skin color, even [one-dimensional] personality) in a few months for around 7 to 9K a pop.

The True Companion website is a little sketchy, requiring you to provide personal contact information if you want to get any more info about Roxxy online. What’s even creepier is the goal of the technology (for these dolls to become “true friends”) and its origin story:

The initial concept for the current sex robot began with a conversation several years ago. A friend and Douglas Hines were remembering a dear friend who passed away. Douglas thought that it was sad to not be able to ever talk to him again. He said “wouldn’t it be great if I could create a robot with artificial intelligence and have it hold someone’s personality and preferences — this way, we could talk to the robotic version of that person and ask it questions whenever we wanted”? We thought it was a great idea though we both agreed that it would be a very big undertaking.

On 9/11/2001, that good friend also passed away in Tower 1 at the World Trade Center. And now we cannot talk to that person… so, this made Douglas think seriously about how to implement a robotic representation of a person and have it reflect that person’s personality.

After test marketing, the concept changed in order to capitalize on the enormous adult entertainment industry.